I have an old Panasonic DBS with 40-ish users here in the office and 3 users who work from home (in different cities, mind you). I would really like to give them extensions off of our PBX here so they can have the same phone number(s) as we have at the main office.

I've dug up two OPX adapters and have them sitting on my desk. I'm wondering... I know I need an OL13C between my OPX and the remote station to make this work... question is.. can this be done between different CO's or even between different states? One of my users is in NY (we're in WA). Can this kind of stuff ride a trunk, or is it pretty much only possible within the same CO?

Thanks,

Chris

Going to move this to the Panasonic forum. I think you will get more specific answers there.

-Hal

Your digital phones will not work, but if you use analog S/L ports out of DBS that should work. But, OPX cross-country! $$$$$$$$$$$$$. Time to investigate some sort of Vonage -type arrangment.

Thanks for moving this, Hal. I wasn't sure if it should go in a Pana-specific forum or a general one.

Yeah, I was afraid that even if it was possible, it would be super spendy. I was hoping we could use this as a stopgap to put PBX-style features on their phones like voicemail and transfer capabilities. In about a year I'll be installing a brand new Cisco Callmanager system, and then we'll be good to go from that standpoint.

Thanks for the help,

Chris:

Yes, an OL13C will work, but most long-distance providers won't provide them anymore. You should look into Multi-Tech's product line for these applications that were actually jointly-developed and marketed with Panasonic. They are simple VoIP gateways which emulate a point-to-point connection, but only an analog (SLT) station can be extended.

Remember that just because the Multi-Tech stuff was announced by Panasonic to their dealers, it's a generic product line that will work with any system, so the customer's investment will be safe if they upgrade the system at a later date.

Ed,

Thanks, I'll look into that. Do you know if they work the same was as the OPX adapter (i.e. digital on the PBX side, analog on the remote side), or do they use an analog PBX port? That could mean a new A-EC if it requires an analog port.

Thanks,

Chris

Chris:

These units definitely use analog station ports, so the far end will need to be a single-line set. There isn't a way to extend a multi-line set to a remote site without changing the system out to an IP-capable system to provide full multi-line set support. At this point, your options are somewhat limited, but an SLT station anywhere in the world via VoIP can be accommodated using these units.

You will basically be using an FXO interface at the system end and an FXS interface at the remote station end. You will simply feed a system extension's dial tone into the FXO interface and bring it back out at the far end using an FXS. It's basically an empty pipe via the Internet to transport the SLT extension.

https://www.mck.com/ check out EXTender products
I am pretty sure that you can extend a DBS keysets with them

I'm going to try a MultiTech VOIP gateway.

Looks like the EXTender product line supports the Pana DBS576 and 576HD, but not the older DBS (I've got a DBS96+40)

Thanks for the advice, all.

sorry you never actually said it was a 96.

no prob, I just said DBS, so I left it pretty open ended